Time magazine, which named Dr. Anthony Fauci to its “most influential people of 2020” list, is choosing to remain silent about the recent bombshell report that found the U.S. government contributed funding to controversial gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Documents uncovered by The Intercept contradict Fauci’s sworn testimony claiming the National Institutes of Health didn’t fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
Breitbart News contacted Time to ask if the magazine had any comment on The Intercept’s findings and if the magazine intends to follow up with Fauci about the veracity of his sworn Congressional testimony.
At the time of publication, this inquiry has not received a response.
Not only did Time put Fauci on its list of the 100 most influential people of 2020, it also published a gushing feature profile in May that described him as “an unwavering advocate for science and the facts.”
“Fauci conducted a master class in scientific diplomacy, and invited the world to watch,” the article stated. “We witnessed his live demonstrations on how to stay true to the facts despite the disruptive and often vindictive interventions of a President [Trump] refusing to acknowledge the gravity of COVID-19.”
President Trump did in fact acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic by shutting down travel from China in January 2020 and spearheading Operation Warp Speed, which delivered the vaccine in less than a year.
The Time reporter who wrote the Fauci profile — staff writer Alice Park — also didn’t respond to a request for comment from Breitbart News.
The Intercept’s report is based on 900 pages of unreleased documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The progressive left outlet found the U.S. government provided the EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans.
Under oath, Fauci has repeatedly stated that the National Institutes of Health’s funding of the Wuhan lab didn’t include gain-of-function research.
As Breitbart News noted, The Intercept’s report quotes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, who said that the viruses the Wuhan lab constructed “were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell.” And these viruses included both SARS-related and MERS-related coronaviruses.
Ebright later posted an eight-part thread on Twitter explaining in greater detail the document’s revelations concerning the “enhanced pathogenicity” of one of the “novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses” created by the Wuhan lab.
He noted that this particular Wuhan lab-generated SARS-related coronavirus had not been “previously disclosed publicly” and that it was found to be “more pathogenic” to humans than “the starting virus from which it was constructed.”
Ebright’s conclusion: Fauci — and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins — had been “untruthful” about the funding and the research it enabled.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
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